“Everybody loved Baby-Doll until you came along. You made them forget me. Now Baby’s gonna get evens.”“Love That Baby” was the hottest sitcom on television. But when its star Mary Louise Dahl (Alison LaPlaca) tried to go legitimate, the show was cancelled. Years later, the stars of the show begin disappearing, leading Batman and Robin to Dahl, suffering from physical and mental ailments, held together only by her warped desire to reunite her “family” back together – and take revenge on the former child star she blames for destroying her career as Baby-Doll.
Most of the time, I forget that “Baby-Doll” is an episode ofBatman: The Animated Series, and when I remember, I never recall that Paul Dini is this episode’s author. And if I’ve ever said that Paul Dini has never written a bad episode of BtAS, it was a consequence of momentary aphasia, because “Baby-Doll” is unreservedly one of the least successful episodes in the show’s long history. It’s strange, it’s unsettling, and it doesn’t funnel its weirdness into anything productive other than to say that show business is a cruel place – a lesson that never quite fits into the morality of BtAS.
Perhaps more so than “Fire From Olympus,” “Baby-Doll” walks the uncomfortable line of presenting a villain who is quite obviously suffering from mental illness, and the discomfiting problem is exacerbated by the fact that Baby-Doll looks like a small child. Batman can’t physically attack a toddler, so the optics of the moments when he comes close are just bizarre. Never mind all the ways the episode tries to remind us that Baby-Doll is actually an adult (including the peculiar way LaPlaca plays her baby-talk voice as a deliberate put-on), Baby-Doll still looks like Elmyra Duff from Pinky and the Brain. To top it all off, the character is just plain irritating, squeaky and diminutive, with a plotline that pales in (unfair) comparison to the much stronger “Beware the Gray Ghost,” which similarly presented a dangerous nostalgia for a television series. Baby-Doll is one of only two new characters not to make the move from this show into the comics; we’ll spend time with the other one next week, but it seems apparent that I’m not the only one vastly underwhelmed by Baby-Doll.
And yet... despite this episode largely being rubbish, Paul Dini manages to turn in a deftly competent third act, though to be fair it does feel airlifted in from a better version of this episode in which Joker would have been the villain, echoing the better parts of “Be A Clown.” (Maybe Joker kidnapping the stars of his favorite sitcom because nothing else on television makes him laugh anymore?) Once Baby-Doll goes from the kidnapping plot to fleeing Batman through a nearby carnival, the episode swerves through a number of really successful moments, like the matter of Baby-Doll blending in with a crowd of children. Dini taps into a key Bat-insight when all the actual children run toward Batman, while Baby-Doll runs away; it takes the childlike innocence of youth to recognize that Batman is, despite his fearsome appearance, a force for good. And when Baby-Doll darts into a hall of mirrors, I may just be feeling the residual effects from similar scenes with The Joker, but I had a strongly emotional reaction to how Dini humanizes Baby-Doll as she confronts her own monstrosity.
That said, even though the third act is quite strong, I can’t say it’s an effective counter to an otherwise dismal episode. “Baby-Doll” is a rare misfire from a creator who’s otherwise always in full command of his craft. Then again, perhaps there isn’t anyone who could have turned this stinker of a story into a strong episode, and Dini’s third act is the best he could muster. It is a bit like asking Dale Earnhardt to drive a clunker – he can only take it so far before his tools fail him.
Writer: Paul Dini
Director: Dan Riba
Villain: Baby-Doll (Alison LaPlaca)
Next episode: “The Lion and the Unicorn,” in which the villain I guarantee you’ve forgotten turns up to spoil what could be an otherwise enjoyable Alfred episode.
🦇For the full list of Batman: The Animated Series reviews, click here.🦇
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